


A Many-Petaled Rose

by Mejhiren



Series: Fairy Tales of Panem [5]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: (because it's becoming a Thing), Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Bear!Marko, Enchantments, F/M, Fairy Tales, Magic, Multi-Level Everlark, Naked Marko, Primko, Red Roses, Rose Red!Katniss, Roses, Snow White and Rose Red, Snow White!Prim, Virgin!Everlark, White-Blonde Prim, Wood Witch!Alyssum, white roses
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 09:41:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/810134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mejhiren/pseuds/Mejhiren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'O the red rose is a falcon / And the white rose is a dove.' </p><p>A multi-Everlark retelling of “Snow White and Rose Red,” inspired by the fairy tale and Patricia C. Wrede’s magnificent retelling thereof. Fantasy AU, written for the THG Fairy Tale Fic Challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Many-Petaled Rose

**Author's Note:**

> The title refers to the fic itself – a love story with many layers, which will be revealed as the tale progresses – but also applies to Prim and Katniss, both of whom are beautifully complex or “many-petaled” characters.
> 
> Character ages are revealed throughout this chapter, but lest anyone panic before then: Prim is sixteen here.
> 
> Overwhelming thanks to DandelionSunset and sponsormusings for reading (and loving) every snippet I threw at them. This one is dedicated to both of you! :D

_The red rose whispers of passion,_  
 _And the white rose breathes of love;_  
 _O the red rose is a falcon,  
_ _And the white rose is a dove._

 _But I send you a cream-white rosebud_  
 _With a flush on its petal tips;_  
 _For the love that is purest and sweetest  
_ _Has a kiss of desire on the lips._

_-“A White Rose,” John Boyle O’Reilly_

 

I crouch beside the patch of wild strawberries and pick a handful of tiny bright fruits, but my sister, who loves them best of all of us, gives my braid a playful tug as she passes me by.

“ _Do_ come along, Katniss,” she teases. “We’ve all of summer for berrying, and I want my supper.” She continues down the wood-path with a merry laugh, her slim fingers tangled in her companion’s golden pelt and her pale head resting against his shoulder.

Before the bear, Prim and I had never parted for more than a moment or two, and she held my arm in the woods.

Much has changed in the months since St. Thomas’s Day, when my sister answered the knock at our cottage door and admitted a great golden bear, thrice the size of a man and covered snout to tail in fresh snow. My hand was on my father’s bow before I had time to think, and I had an arrow nocked and trained upon the beast’s eye, very nearly loosed. But Prim – foolish, tender Prim – leapt in front of the bear with a shout of protest, wrapping her slender arms about its thick neck. “No, you must not!” she cried. “Can you not see: he is cold and frightened and very likely lost! Would you wish to be a stranger, slaughtered thus on the very threshold of comfort?”

Prim had never defied me before the bear either, but in the months that have passed since that eve, I have offered her both apology and thanks for staying my hand.

The bear could understand human speech but not produce it, and over the next two days, while heavy snow and bitter winds kept us indoors and as near the fire as possible, he and my sister quickly worked out a system of communication. He would repay our hospitality tenfold, she promised Mother and me – though how she translated such eloquence from grunts and growls and the shaking of a great shaggy head, I still cannot imagine. The bear would bring us game each day in exchange for a night at our fire – which, at the time, was no bad bargain. Skilled hunter though I am, the bear would be a better tracker of those elusive creatures that wintered in our wood, and he could hunt more easily in deep snow than I.

When he left our cottage, the first morning after the snow had let up, I was certain we should not see him again, and count ourselves lucky in it, for the bear could have had the three of us – and Prim’s little spotted goat besides – in one mouthful. But return he did, that night and every one after, and always with limp prey of some kind in his mouth. Most often it was rabbit – the bear brought more rabbits than any of us could eat, save for perhaps himself – and I quickly filled a basket with their thick winter pelts. Mother and I were discussing possible uses for the furs one eve when the bear padded over to me, took the lip of the basket carefully between his jaws, and overturned its contents onto my sister’s lap.

“What is the meaning of this?” she laughed, stroking his shaggy flat head with her slender white hands. “Do you wish me to wear them, dear bear?”

The bear nodded vigorously in reply, and Mother and I accordingly set to making Prim garments of rabbit fur. We began simply enough with slippers, a cap, and mittens, but the bear replenished our store of pelts as quickly as we made use of them. By Candlemas, Prim was dressed head to foot in rabbit fur, and the bear rested his great head on his paws and gazed at her with a gusty, contented sigh.

Prim adored the bear from the first, and the feeling was almost embarrassingly mutual.

She spent countless hours currying his coat, producing sleepy grunts of delight from that rumbling throat, and spun his shed fur into three skeins of precious golden yarn, which she tucked away in Mother’s rosewood chest with a strange flush on her fair face. Prim preferred sitting against or even upon the bear’s broad back for our evening pastimes, and more than once I woke to find her having forsaken the little bed we shared to slumber instead beside the fire, nestled into the curve of the bear’s massive body.

Out of doors she was just as brave. On our first outing after the snowstorm that brought the bear to our door, Prim came alongside him, grasped mittened handfuls of his heavy coat, and pulled herself astride his back as though he were a pony. I expected the beast to rage at this or shake her off but he seemed, if anything, entirely pleased to bear her about, for he continued to do so through all the months he stayed with us – and, indeed, would even bend his forelegs and bow his great head to make it easier for my sister to mount.

To her eternal credit, she never wove for him a bridle of flowers but contented herself with her perch and handfuls of his thick fur.

I look up at a sound – or rather, series of them – that is terrifyingly out of place. A bear’s growl, pained and furious, then my sister’s voice raised in anger. A cry of fear, a thump of flesh being heavily struck, another growl, a scream – and I am on my feet, berries spilled in the grass like bright drops of blood.

I remind myself that the bear would not hurt Prim – would _never_ hurt her. I am more convicted in that than I am in the changing seasons and the rising of the sun in the east. But still I run so fast that my sides scream, the bow already in my hands.

I burst into the clearing with a heavy gasp. I imagined half a dozen scenarios in the moments it took to get here, but the tableau before me matches none of them. The dwarf, that covetous fool with his vain white beard and greed for gold and roses, lies in the grass, quite still, with a heavy branch thrown beside him. Very near is my sister, but she is not looking at the fallen dwarf. Her attention, and mine, is on the large naked man – powerfully built and easily twice Prim’s size – looming over her, a heavy golden pelt tangled about his feet.

I can’t begin to guess what’s happened here, but I see my sister in unspeakable peril – the sort Mother has warned of only in whispers – and I nock an arrow, training it on the strange man’s throat. He sees me and calls out something, his eyes wide, but my ears are plugged with terror. I correct my aim and am about to loose the bowstring when Prim whirls about, her eyes half fearful, half furious.

“No, you must _not_!” she cries – somehow it breaks through the block in my hearing – and she wraps herself around the man, or rather, as much of him as she can. He stands head and shoulders above her, his body thick with muscle and broad as an ancient oak.

I lower my bow a little and come closer. The man’s arms are wrapped around my sister in turn, and one big hand cradles her head to his bare chest, almost lovingly. “Do not you know me, Katniss?” he says. His voice is light but rich; a cultured voice, befitting a nobleman. “Have I shared your bread and hearth these many months,” he wonders, “only for you to forget me when finally I remove my coat?”

My mouth drops open. _Can it be?_ Mother murmured once or twice that the bear’s friendliness, his urge to share our home, his attachment to Prim, even, was _too_ human; that there might be a curse at work. But surely –

Prim draws back from the man then and takes his face in her hands, studying him intently. He’s quite handsome; magnificent, really. Thick white-blonde curls tumbling almost to his shoulders; fair skin with a boyish ruddiness about the cheeks. A round, pleasant face; a wide mouth, made for laughter, and eyes like the lake on a clear spring morning.

I see little enough of the bear in him, save for his great size and fair hair, but suddenly Prim says, almost as a sigh: “ _It’s you_.” And at once she tugs the man’s head down and presses her mouth to his, over and over again; happy kisses, then hungry ones, as the man’s strong arms tighten about her and draw her even closer.

I stare at them openly with no small measure of astonishment.

Prim and I have lived in the wood all our lives, and for the past eight years we have been secreted at its heart; cut off, almost entirely, from peasant and noble alike. Neither of us has ever kissed a man, nor met one we should think to kiss upon seeing again. Except –

_Oh._

Eight years ago it was, near exactly, that the boys found their way to our cottage. Brothers they were, simply dressed, but their milky skin, bright blue eyes, and straw-colored curls – to say nothing of the little spiced cakes and sweet wine they took from their satchels to share at luncheon-time, and the gold they gave Mother when we parted – suggested a finer birth. Merchant’s sons, at the very least. There had been a certain furtive air about their visit, as though they had escaped tutors or a parent’s watchful eye to seek us. They rode horses into the wood, of course, but tethered them behind as the trees grew too thick and close for their mounts to pass, and finally reached our home on foot.

Father had died just months before, and Mother had moved us, cottage and all, to the heart of the Applewood. I was a fierce and surly child of twelve at the time; a ragtag girl with muddy, blistered hands, exhausted and near my wit’s end from filling my father’s role as parent and provider. Prim was tiny and fearless at eight – and aggravatingly restless in her solitude.

The younger brother was my age, the elder four years older, and they must have found us by the grace of God or some great magic, for Mother had hidden us well in her grief. The boys came to find the Wood Witch, they confessed with downcast eyes and deep blushes, for they had heard she was both powerful and the loveliest woman who had ever lived.

Neither of these was untrue.

It was our mother they came to seek, of course. Her name is Alyssum, or more formally the Widow Everdeen, but she gained the title “the Wood Witch” long ago and will still claim it if she must. Many years ago she was the daughter of the royal apothecary under King Marko; a renowned beauty and fine healer in her own right. Even the King’s son paid her court, Father told us once in a whisper, but she left the palace to wed a handsome woodsman with the voice of a lark, and set up in his cottage on the edge of the Applewood.

She is extraordinarily beautiful, even now. Her hair is the pale yellow of honeysuckles and her skin like apple blossoms; silken white with just a whisper of rosy pink. Her eyes are like hyacinths, so deep and saturated a blue that they sometimes seem the very purple of her namesake.

Prim is very like her, and yet not. Where Mother’s beauty is cultivated and elegant, like a king’s pleasure-garden, Prim’s is at once delicate and wild, like columbines and bleeding-hearts and lily-of-the-valley. Mother is very fair, but Prim is paler still. Her skin is like alabaster and her hair the lightest possible shade that can still be called blonde. In summer, it shimmers like frost. Her eyes are even closer to violet than Mother’s and her brows and lashes, like Mother’s, are strikingly, unexpectedly dark, almost sooty. Both Mother and Prim have figures like lilies, with rich curves at hip and bosom.

I am nothing like either of them; a raven to their doves. I favor my father, who was accounted quite handsome in his day, but _handsome_ is a different thing entirely on a maiden of twenty years of age, with precious few other graces to recommend her. My hair is straight and black as a crow’s wing and my skin the pale pebble-brown of a mourning-dove’s breast. I am small and slight of build, though my little hands are strong and callused from years of chopping wood, hauling water, and hunting and fishing to put meat on our table. My hips are an afterthought and my breasts like late apples, small and firm, placed high on the slim trunk of my body.

Of course, at twelve I was skinny as a sapling and plainer still; _a very goblin,_ our looking-glass taunted, and Prim a fairy child with her frost-pale hair and ivory skin. And somehow the boys found both of us more fascinating than our mother.

They came to see the Wood Witch and instead, for one golden dream of a day, found playfellows in her daughters. None of us exchanged names, for there is much power in them and Mother forbade it, but it affected our time together little enough. Prim adored the elder of the two, then sixteen and already brawny as a man grown, and he was only too happy to spend his day with her. She climbed onto his back and assailed him with questions as she led him to her favorite haunts:  duck nests, squirrel hoards, and pretty copses filled with fragrant, lacy ferns.

Could this man who holds my sister be that boy? This veritable hillock, all muscles and ruddy beauty, whose mouth covers hers ardently as a single tear streaks his cheek?

 _Who else,_ I wonder, _should weep to embrace my sister, save one who has done so before?_

For that one golden day, Prim scarcely let the boy out of reach, let alone sight. After luncheon, when the four of us sat at the lakeside and took our ease, the elder boy lay back in the grass with a happy sigh and my sister, quite openly besotted, lay down beside him. She rested her little face on his chest – it was less broad then, but still solid and strong – and he curled an arm about her, trailing his fingers through her pale hair as they dozed, all innocent affection.

When they left us at dusk, Prim stood on tiptoe to press a bold kiss to his cheek, and the boy hugged her tightly in return.

Their kiss breaks at last with a great gasp, and the man cups my sister’s delicate face in his big hands. “Primrose,” he sighs, so softly I can barely hear, as his thumbs trace the contours of her cheekbones. “In my mind you have long been ‘the little snow-white maiden,’” he says. “You cannot know how I longed for the day I should discover – and at last _speak_ – your true name.”

“I have yearned likewise,” she whispers in return, raising both hands to rest over his heart. Prim’s skin is ivory, but the man’s is little darker, save in its faint becoming ruddiness. “You were ‘the boy with cloud-curls,’” she says.

My brows fly up in surprise. Prim has never once spoken of a “boy with cloud-curls,” though I suppose the description is apt enough in light of this man’s white-blonde hair – which, if memory serves, had been quite similarly pale when he was a youth of sixteen. Then again, Prim only mentioned her boy to me once after their visit, and I chided her sternly and told her never to speak such foolishness again.

“Marko,” the man tells her, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “My name is Marko.”

“Marko,” I say, a little too loudly, and my voice is a croak. My sister and the man look up in surprise, as though they’d forgotten any was there but themselves, and they quickly break their embrace, blushing fiercely. With his already ruddy cheeks, the man’s handsome face is red as a beet-root.

In spite of myself, my eyes move swiftly down his body. I have never seen a naked man before, save for the briefest glimpses of my father, many years ago now, and his lean body makes a poor standard of comparison for this man’s. Marko’s chest is a broad, magnificently defined landscape of ridges and hollows, tapering to very narrow hips and a taut belly. His torso is dusted with fine golden hairs that trail down to a nest of curls between his powerful legs, where there hangs a strange limb, pink and firm and heavy, about as long as one of Mother’s tallow candles at its half-burned point and as thick as my sister’s bird-boned wrist.

I color fiercely and look away. I am a maid and wholly ignorant of such things, but this man is seemingly enormous _everywhere_.

“Have I passed inspection, lady?” he teases gently, and I reluctantly look back to find his face, somehow, redder still. “I beg pardon for my unclothed state,” he says, with true contrition. “I knew not how the curse would leave me, and I confess myself reluctant to don this again so soon.” He nudges the golden pelt at his feet, which I realize now must be his bearskin.

“I shall trade, if you like,” my sister says. Her cheeks are quite dark, but she doesn’t look away from his body. “Here.”

She unwinds her shawl, a pretty piece of white linen embroidered with buttercups and bluebells in intricate detail. She worked on the garment for many nights this past January, seated on the floor by the fire, with her back propped against the bear – or rather, against _Marko._

He takes the dainty shawl with a crooked grin. It’s little better than a napkin for covering a man as large as he, but he makes do, kilting it about his loins and knotting the three corners snugly at the base of his spine. The pretty linen is sufficient to cover his privates and the cleft of his backside but precious little else. The full length of his strong legs, a whisper of his hipbones, even the muscular curves of his buttocks are still exposed. 

This, however, seems to bother neither him nor my sister. Prim bends to pick up his bearskin with a grin – her trade for the shawl, it would seem – and it proves almost too much for her to contain. It is, to my surprise, a smooth expanse of golden fur in one enormous piece, as broad as two beds and unbroken by limbs or a face, unlike the pelts I harvest. It’s as though Marko shed his bearskin like a fine cloak and had his man’s body beneath it all along, though I know full well that this had not been the case.

“This I shall keep until you return my shawl,” Prim says, making a bundle of the fur in her arms with an expression that might almost be saucy, and I realize that, for such a trade to take place, Marko must be naked once more.

“Prim!” I gasp, mortified at her implication, and her cheeks grow dark again.

“Forgive me,” she says to us both, looking truly shamed. “I was only funning.”

I know she speaks truth. Prim is a maid of sixteen who has not been among people – save for the rare visitor to our cottage, seeking my mother’s healing magic – in eight years. She cannot know how bold her words must sound, to Marko’s ears most of all.

But he is quite unoffended, it seems, though his blush has deepened once more. “You won it fairly, I think,” he tells her, and turns toward the body of the white-bearded dwarf, whom we all have forgotten till now. “Much sorrow this one caused,” he says darkly, prodding the dwarf’s body with one large foot. “Though that is at an end now, or nearly.”

He turns to me suddenly, his bright eyes urgent. “His lair,” he says. “Where did the dwarf hoard his treasure?”

“The cave, I think,” Prim answers, looking to me for confirmation. “We saw him depart there often enough.”

“We must go there at once!” Marko says, and stretches out a hand to her. “Lead me?”

For the second time in a quarter-hour, my sister takes hold of another and walks ahead of me. I know she means no ill by it and has, in fact, been drawing away from me ever since she first threw her arms around the bear and told me I should not kill him. But still it vexes me. I am not accustomed to this fierce, independent Prim; moreover, I cannot help wondering what the end of this will be. This man has held and kissed her – and was naked at the time, though I suppose that much cannot be held against him. He speaks as one gently bred, and to such a man, overtures such as these must imply courtship and, eventually, marriage. But would such a man pluck a wife from the Applewood? Prim is a maid and surpassing fair, even fairylike in her beauty, and would well ornament the arm and home of a burgher’s son, as I take him to be. But she is hardly high-born, which Mother tells me oftimes matters most of all.

As we make our way to the dwarf’s cave, Prim explains quickly what transpired before I reached them, and the meaning of the worrisome sounds I heard. “We arrived at the clearing the same time as the dwarf,” she says, her voice rising a little with excitement as she turns to address me, walking as I am, some paces behind. “I meant only to give him good day, as we do, and go about our own business, but the bear – _Marko_ –” she corrects herself, squeezing his hand with a sweet smile – “was in a sudden fury at the mere sight of him, growling like I’d never heard before and batting his great paws, as though confined by an invisible cage. I guessed that the dwarf was the cause of his distress, for he stood there, cold-eyed and menacing, as he’d never been toward you or I, so I grabbed the first branch to hand – a-and struck him a blow on the head.”

She finishes in a rush, her cheeks very pink, and I am no little astonished. Where I have twice drawn a bow on Marko and would have fired both times without hesitation, Prim is the gentlest creature in the wood and has never raised a hand to harm anyone or anything. For her to strike the dwarf – to strike _first_ , no less – is unprecedented, even unbelievable.

Marko picks up the story then, squeezing her hand in turn. “Primrose has the right of it,” he says, looking back at me. “I was constrained by the dwarf’s spell, as I have been these many months, and could not come near him. But no sooner had she struck the dwarf than I felt myself free to charge, and did. I am sorry to have acted in such violence," he adds to my sister, his face softening. "But that creature had committed great evil, and only by his death could my enchantment be ended.”

“T’was he who cursed you, then?” I ask, taking a few swift steps so I might walk alongside my sister. I mislike being addressed over another’s shoulder like a wayward and dawdling child; moreover, their hands are clasped tightly between them, further excluding me. “Mother says his magics are crude, but efficient,” I say.

“Small, but powerful,” Prim adds, looking to me with a little nod. “Even she knew not that he had the power to turn a man to a beast.”

“Nor I, in truth,” Marko answers gravely. “And as you said, Katniss: I was cursed indeed.

“I came to the Applewood on St. Andrew’s Day, warmly cloaked and bearing many rich gifts,” he begins, and Prim quickly pipes up, “For what purpose?”

He chuckles, a warm, golden rumble that makes my heart yearn strangely, and lifts Prim’s hand to his lips for a brief, sound kiss. “ _That_ , you shall learn soon enough, sweetling,” he says, and I can hear a smile in his voice. “The dwarf confronted me on a wood-path and demanded tribute ere he would let me pass: a quarter of what I carried. Of course, every one of those gifts had been chosen, crafted even, with the utmost care, and not one would I give away at the request of a puffed-up dwarf.  None is lord in the Applewood, to charge a toll upon its paths, and when I told the little creature as much, he flew into a rage and set the curse upon me.

“Once changed to the bear’s form, I could make no move against him – not even take a step in his direction, were he near,” Marko explains. “And as such, he took all of my treasures with impunity. Now that he has met his end, I dare to hope the greedy creature retained all that he stole, for I would have them back, and as swiftly as can be managed.”

We have reached the mouth of the dwarf’s carve, and I frown. There is an intensity in Marko’s manner that has nothing whatsoever to do with treasure – leastways, of a material kind – but I cannot quite identify it.

“Do enchantments lie within, do you think?” Prim asks me, and at once I draw my bow and walk into the cave. A foolishly bold action, perhaps, but I will not be shamed by my gentle sister, who clubbed a villain for vexing – nay, _hexing_ – her companion.

No curses fall upon me, however, as I walk into the torchlit hollow. The dwarf’s residence, I am shocked to find, is not unlike our own cottage, with a snug kitchen and bedroom, even a little chair beside the rudely carved fireplace, but there the similarity ends. On every surface, other people’s treasures are piled high and untidily: gold-framed miniatures, fine leather-bound books, little jeweled boxes, bolts of silk, stacks of gold and silver coins.

 _No wonder we have been so long alone in the Applewood,_ I realize, _and visitors so rare and fearful._ The dwarf kept our solitude by robbing those who traveled the wood-paths, not least those who might have come to us. Just one of these items might be the whole fortune a person brought to trade with the Wood Witch, and they would not dare to proceed to her cottage, having surrendered it.

“I will not ask your aid, but neither will I refuse it,” Marko says from behind me. “The items taken from me are all pretty gifts, of the sort that might be given to a maiden, and all bearing upon them the symbol of a white rose.”

“A white rose?” Prim echoes. I know the inflections of her voice better than my own; I need not look back across the dimly lit chamber to see her puzzlement.

“The very same,” Marko replies. I wonder why a gently bred man would travel into the Applewood, bearing with him many rich presents adorned with a white rose, and then it strikes me, like a blow to the stomach.

White roses. _Prim’s roses._

And I know exactly why Marko came to the wood on St. Andrew’s Day.

Two rosebushes stand in front of our cottage, possessing in them more magic than my mother might in a lifetime. They were born of love and grief, the night we buried my father.

It is a sad story, beginning with my mother bathing my father’s broken body, so tenderly, then with my aid, wrapping him in our best coverlet and laying him in the back of the pony-cart. Mother took two spades from our back door and sat with Father’s body while Prim huddled and wept against me, and we drove deeper and deeper into the Applewood.

I know not how Mother knew when we reached its heart – neither, I think, did she, for she was then still and mindless in her sorrow – but of a sudden she called to me, her voice clear and sharp with that edge that portends magic, and bade me stop the cart. While Prim, not yet eight years old, hugged the pony’s neck and cried, Mother and I dug a long oblong hollow: a humble grave at the very heart of the wood for my woodsman father. Mother laid him to rest with many kisses and sobs and prayers, then she told Prim and I to make beds for ourselves upon the forest floor and she would see to the rest.

Prim wept even harder then, thinking Mother had surely gone mad, but I made pillows of our petticoats, stuffing them with ferns and knotting both ends, then we curled together in a patch of moss, Prim tucked as tightly against me as possible. My sister fell asleep almost at once, exhausted by her grief, but I lay awake longer and watched. Mother shook out her long braid of pale gold, then, with many strange songs and incantations, trod a precise space among the trees, encompassing in it both Father’s grave and the place where Prim and I lay. When she had finished, she lay upon Father’s grave, her white hand plunged to the wrist into the freshly turned earth, and cried herself to sleep.

Prim and I woke the following morning in our own little bed – in our own room, no less – but when we sprang up in wonder and ran to our window, we saw not the road to the village and the fields beyond but tall trees and cool green shadows all around. We tumbled down the stairs in disbelief and found it was quite true: Mother had, by some profound and powerful magic, moved our cottage to the heart of the Applewood overnight.

Everything had come with: the little hut that served as pony-stall and coop for our four speckled hens (who seemed none the wiser for the move); Mother’s neat garden plot, full of herbs both common and rare, and all potent. Even the little walkway of pebbles that Prim and Father had assembled the previous autumn marched up the lawn of moss and violets to our relocated cottage, but: on either side of the pebble-walk – which, we learned, lay over Father’s grave, so that even in death he might guard our door – were large, glorious rosebushes, fully grown in one night and heavy with blooms.

Mother told Prim and I that they were Father’s bequest to us, for one lay on his right and the other on his left. The rosebush on his right was thick with white double-blooms; not a true white, of course, stark and colorless, but the white of clouds and cream, with whispers of palest pink and gold. Its fragrance, while entirely rose-like in character, contained in it sweet, almost powdery notes of lavender and sugar and honeysuckle, like a maiden’s scent locket resting upon a pale bosom. It was a perfect cutting-rose – or picking-rose, even, for its leaves were lacy and its branches thornless.

The rosebush on Father’s left was as like the other as a wildwood is like a pleasure-garden. This bush bore double-blooms like its sister, but of the deep, rich red of heart’s blood, and their fragrance was equally bold; a little frightening, even, at first sniff. Amid that full-bodied scent which is undeniably _red rose_ there were notes of incense and anise and musk, yielding a spicy, almost smoky perfume. Its stems were dark and woody, with thorns as needle-sharp as a pup’s milk teeth and leaves dark and glossy and jagged. A forbidding plant, to be sure, but catching to the eye and breathtaking to draw near to.

It took no great seer to recognize the roses as being like Prim and myself: a portrait painted in stem, leaf, and flower, and rather too generously in my case. But Father had loved me best, and his praise had always been more affectionate than I deserved.

The rosebushes tended themselves well, or perhaps Father’s spirit tended them in the night while we slept. We never pruned either of them, save for when we cut blossoms for our own pleasure – one bloom could scent an entire room – or for medicines. The properties of each, we learned, were as unique as the rosebushes themselves. The white rose was soothing, the red invigorating. The white healed fevers, the red chills.

The white was beautifying: Prim blended its essence into tonics and creams that left her skin and hair more radiant than ever before. The red was sustaining; a practical plant, despite its dramatic first impression. Its woody stems, if well-soaked, could be sliced and fried like a root vegetable or boiled for a nourishing, even pleasant soup. The thorns, ground in a mortar and steeped for a good hour, yielded a powerful tonic-brew for menstrual complaints.

The roses bloomed year-round without aid of any kind and if cut, the blossoms never wilted. _Ever._ Prim once kept a white rose in a little teacup at her bedside, so she might wake to the sight and scent of her own beloved flower, and it remained full and fragrant long after its water was gone. The only way to destroy the cut roses was to burn them, and even then, the results were unexpectedly appealing. Prim’s roses gave off a becoming scent of burnt sugar and lavender when cast upon the fire, and mine smelled of incense and mulling spices. We burned a few of Prim’s roses at Easter, feeling foolish and a little decadent for the indulgence, and mine perfumed our hearth for all twelve days of Christmas.

If unplucked, the blossoms of both ripened to rose hips, with a character as individual at the bushes themselves. The white rose bore golden hips that were honey-like in character and more floral than fruity; they made for exquisite jams and cordials, especially when combined with the wild strawberries Prim loved so well. The red rose bore deep crimson hips that were tart and winey and burst on the tongue. When condensed to a tincture, Mother discovered they proved most effective for strengthening the heart and blood, but few enough came to our cottage for healing, let alone with so specific a need, and I confess I ate far more rose hips than I harvested for healing purposes.

When the boys left our cottage at the end of that golden day, both shyly asked a rose as a parting token, for Prim had told them absolutely everything about our magical rosebushes, to my great chagrin. The younger boy reached toward my rosebush – they had quickly become _Prim’s_ and _mine_ – and I caught his hand with a little exclamation. “Careful,” I cautioned. “My roses have thorns, and I should hate for one to prick you.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that,” he said quietly, his impossibly bright blue eyes fixed not on the roses, but on my face. My cheeks grew warm for reasons I could not understand, and behind him, his brother chuckled.

Then as now, I disliked being laughed at. I withdrew my hand from his and, with my little belt knife, cut the largest, most flawless red rose I could find, plus a handful of plump rose hips for the boy to eat on his journey. He tucked the hips into his belt pouch with a grateful murmur, then took the rose carefully in both hands – _so_ carefully, for a boy of twelve whose hands were already large and strong. He breathed in its fragrance with a sigh and pressed a kiss to its petals, his bright eyes on my face once more, and my cheeks grew hotter still.

Prim plucked a white rose for the elder boy without difficulty, for her roses were thornless and grew on tender stems, and she presented it to him with a kiss on his cheek.

And now he returns to the Applewood, bearing gifts adorned with white roses. Can my sister truly be so blind? Or has she somehow, in our solitude, learned to play coy?

I look back to see Prim and Marko, smiling at one another as they locate many costly, handsome items, one after another. A parcel of creamy gold silk, heavily embroidered with white roses. A fine pair of leaf-green gloves, with a vine of white roses at the cuffs. A small leather-bound book – ideal for a healer’s notes – with a white rose worked on its cover. All perfect gifts for Prim.

Marko brought those treasures for _her_ , very likely as betrothal gifts. He _does_ mean to wed my sister, the little snow-white maiden he met as a child and knew for a single day.

Suddenly cross, I kick the object nearest my boot – a bronze candlestick, beautifully crafted – and it knocks over the bolt of silk in front of me, in so doing, throwing to the floor an object that had been draped over the top of the bolt. A flash of red and gold, it lands with a soft metallic _chink_ , and I crouch to pick it up.

It’s a necklace, finely wrought of dull gold, and between its links lie roses of made of rubies: tiny, breathtaking flowerets, delicately petaled.

_Red roses._

**Author's Note:**

> Hopefully my Marko Mellark fans are enjoying this. ;D Patricia C. Wrede’s marvelous Elizabethan retelling features the bear transforming into a naked man (as opposed to a prince dressed all in gold ;D), and it couldn’t *not* happen here.
> 
> This fic is kind of my baby – the only one I originally planned to write for the fairy tale challenge! - and I’m both giddy and nervous about sharing it. I need another WIP like I need a hole in the head, and I'm currently exhausted from cranking out challenge fics, so I'm not sure how soon this will be continued. But I'd love to hear your thoughts! :D


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